The good news is that the Seattle Mariners have 43 games remaining to get their season back on the rails and return to the postseason. The bad news is that the Mariners have been trending down for weeks and are as far away from a postseason berth as they have been at any point this year. That's where 19 losses in your last 28 games and 34 losses in your last 57 games put you.
"Difficult day. Difficult series," manager Dan Wilson told reporters, including MLB.com, after his team was swept by the Tampa Bay Rays on Sunday (TB 4, SEA 1).
American League wild-card standings
1. Yankees: 66-52 (+7 GB)
2. Red Sox: 64-53 (+5 ½ GB)
3. Rangers: 59-59
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4. Tigers: 58-60 (1 GB)
5. Twins: 58-61 (1 ½ GB)
6. Guardians: 58-61 (1 ½ GB)
7. Orioles: 57-61 (2 GB)
8. Mariners: 56-62 (3 ½ GB)
The number of teams the Mariners must pass (five) is more important than the deficit (3 ½ games). In theory, you can make up 3 ½ games with one really great week. Passing five teams is a much taller order. Odds are that one or two (or more) of those teams will win each night. The Mariners can only make small wild-card gains each night, not take huge bites out of their deficit.
Seattle took a series from the Twins on their just-completed homestand, though they also lost a series to the Tigers, then got swept by the Rays. They went 3-6 on the nine-game homestand and scored 0, 4, 0, 1, 2, and 1 runs in their last six games. The two wins over Minnesota were nail-biters, too. Ninth-inning walk-offs. The Mariners operate with zero margin of error these days.
It goes without saying that missing the postseason would be a colossal disappointment. A colossal disappointment and a colossal failure given the preseason expectations (World Series contention) and the state of the American League (as weak as it's ever been). What needs to happen for the Mariners to return to the postseason? Here's how they can right the ship.
They simply need more from Raleigh
It is hard to believe that it is now Aug. 10, and reigning AL MVP runner-up Cal Raleigh is hitting .161/.267/.303. That's a 65 OPS+, meaning Raleigh has been 35% worse than the league-average hitter after adjusting for ballpark. Raleigh was never going to hit 60 home runs again because no one does that, but the guy had a 117 OPS+ from 2022-24. He's not even close to that this year.
Perhaps the most shocking thing about Raleigh's season is just how consistently awful he has been. The league-average catcher has a .690 OPS this season (it's a .719 OPS for all hitters) and Raleigh has cleared that in only two of the 16 weeks he has played around the oblique strain that sent him to the injured list for a month. Here are Raleigh's best weeks this season:
| Dates | PA | OPS |
|---|---|---|
April 20-26 | 28 | 1.309 |
June 22-28 | 26 | .727 |
July 27 to Aug. 2 | 26 | .666 |
July 6-12 | 26 | .664 |
April 6-12 | 26 | .640 |
Raleigh has more weeks with a sub-.500 OPS (seven) than he does with a .600 OPS or better (six). It was not reasonable or fair to expect him to repeat last season's performance; that was an all-time great season. It was, however, reasonable to expect Raleigh to be an above-average hitter, at least for a catcher. Instead, he's been one of the very worst hitters in the sport.
The possible explanations for Raleigh's bad season are countless. He played through that oblique injury for a while before going on the injured list, which could have created bad habits. The enormous catching workload over the years may be catching up to him. He played in the World Baseball Classic (but eventually lost at-bats to Will Smith) and thus had an unusual spring ramp-up.
"That's for everybody else to decide," Raleigh told the Seattle Times about the WBC last month. "I'm not one to make excuses. I don't regret going to play for Team USA. I think that was a great opportunity. I would still do it over again just because you don't get that opportunity every day. At the end of the day, was it harder to get at-bats? Yes. Did it maybe throw my timing off a little? Maybe. But I'm not here to speculate and make excuses."
Whatever the reason, the Mariners simply need more from Raleigh the rest of this season, and he knows that. And for sure, he is not the only underperforming Mariner. Josh Naylor has two home runs in his last 45 games (both in the same game). Rookie Colt Emerson has been one of the worst hitters in baseball over the last month. On and on we could go.
Bottom line, it's really hard to see the Mariners reaching the postseason without Raleigh being a major factor the rest of the way. There's no saving his season stats now, but can Raleigh give them 43 great games to get to the finish line? This, more than anything, is what the Mariners need. A productive Cal Raleigh, if not a superstar Cal Raleigh.
Their aces have to pitch like aces
On paper, the Mariners have arguably the best rotation in baseball. Their rotation is so strong that they traded Luis Castillo at the deadline, essentially in a salary dump, and didn't have to trade for a replacement or call someone up to fill the rotation spot. They had been operating with six starters for five rotation spots for weeks leading up to the deadline.
The Mariners are a pitching-first team. They're built around the ability to send a quality starter to the mound every night who does more than just give them a chance to win. Lately, though, that has not been the case. Seattle's five starters have underwhelmed over the last calendar month:
| Starts | Innings | ERA | FIP | Win probability | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
5 | 32 | 4.22 | 4.12 | -0.19 | |
5 | 23 ⅓ | 3.86 | 4.03 | -0.27 | |
4 | 23 | 4.70 | 3.91 | -0.22 | |
4 | 22 | 3.27 | 5.45 | +0.35 | |
4 | 21 ⅓ | 5.48 | 5.81 | -0.35 |
Only Kirby has had superficially strong results (ERA), but his under-the-hood performance (FIP) suggests some good fortune. Miller went from pitching like an ace through June to pitching like a No. 6 starter since July 1. Gilbert and Woo have looked shockingly ordinary at times since the All-Star break. Not bad, necessarily, just ordinary, and the Mariners need more than ordinary.
Collectively, Seattle's rotation over the last month has been league average or really a tick worse than that once you adjust for their pitcher-friendly home ballpark. The Mariners have baseball's lowest scoring offense this season (3.88 runs per game). If the rotation is not dynamite, they'll have a hard time stacking wins. They need this unit to be nearly flawless the rest of the way.
Forget the wild card, focus on the AL West
Truth be told, it will be much easier for the Mariners to win the AL West than it will be to claim a wild-card spot. It is more or less the same deficit, but Seattle is chasing fewer teams in the division, and they have more head-to-head games remaining with the teams ahead of them. Here are the AL West standings:
1. Astros: 60-59
2. Rangers: 59-59 (½ GB)
3. Mariners: 56-63 (4 GB)
4. Athletics: 47-71 (12 ½ GB)
5. Angels: 45-73 (14 ½ GB)
There's a real chance a sub-.500 team wins the AL West this year, which would be a bad look for baseball, but is also something that greatly benefits the Mariners. No team is running away with this division. The Mariners should consider themselves extremely fortunate that they're seven games under .500 yet are still one great week away from first place.
Head-to-head games are the best way to make up ground late in the season and the Mariners have series remaining with both the Astros and Rangers. Here are those series:
| Opponent | Venue | Games | Dates |
|---|---|---|---|
Astros | Daikin Park | 3 | Aug. 14-16 |
Rangers | T-Mobile Park | 3 | Sept. 8-10 |
Astros | T-Mobile Park | 2 | Sept. 22-23 |
The Mariners go to Houston this coming weekend and that could go down as one of the most important series of the season, period, not just for the Mariners. Either the Mariners will gain ground in the division race or the Astros will push them further down the standings. Then, come September, the Mariners will host the Rangers and Astros.
Given the standings, the tiebreaker could come into play in the AL West. The Mariners have cleaned up against the Astros. They're 7-1 against the Astros and have outscored them 53-26 in the eight games. Seattle already clinched that tiebreaker. Against the Rangers, though, the Mariners are 3-7, so they've already lost that tiebreaker. Texas clinched the season series.
It might take fewer than 84 wins to reach the postseason, either via the AL West title or a wild card, but let's assume it'll take 84 wins. To get there, the Mariners must go 28-15 in their final 43 games, which is a 106-win pace. That's daunting, but doable. This same team had a 26-17 stretch a few weeks ago, and again, it might not even take 84 wins to win the division. It might take 81!
The Mariners need Raleigh (and Brendan Donovan and Julio Rodríguez and others) to perform, they need their rotation to pitch up to its potential, and they have to take care of business head-to-head against the Astros and Rangers in particular. They've dug themselves a pretty deep hole in mid-August. There's still time to climb out, though, but that climb must start right now.
